You Are What You Eat: November 30 through December 14
Streak of not eating in a restaurant - 643 days and counting.
New Recipes for the Year: 156 (+11)
The last fifteen days featured 11 new recipes, including one I made with my mother when we visited them last weekend and three that I broke out for Kati's visit. They collectively came from three different issues of Eating Well, the back of a box, a website, one of my old cookbooks, and a new cookbook that I received for my birthday. Let's break it down.
- I had a piece of puff pastry left after our Thanksgiving Baked Brie, so I made the Potato-Leek Tart with Gochujang & Honey from the November 2021 Eating Well. In the interest of full disclosure, I substituted some other spicy things for the gochujang. I don't know that I'd buy more puff pastry just to make it again, but it was a nice flat-bread style hand held meal, with enough potatoes layered on it to make it more hefty than just a snack.
- The same issue of Eating Well gave us the Beet, Mandarin & Farro Salad. This salad was basically four steps: roast beets, cook faro, mix dressing, toss. M loves roasted beets, and I really enjoy farro. I think we'll make this again. On a side note, big shout out to Bob's Red Mill for putting the InstantPot instructions for farro right on the side of the package, which is the first time I've seen that.
- Kati's visit tapped our cookbook collection. My newest cookbook is Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, which I received as a birthday gift from my mother-in-law. It's the predecessor to the Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream Desserts that I'd been given a few years ago. We broke out the Backyard Mint Ice Cream as the first test subject from the cookbook. By a truly fortuitous and I swear completely unplanned coincidence, Backyard Mint Ice Cream is apparently Kati's favorite Jeni's flavor, so that worked really well. The mint leaves "steep" in the milk mix like tea, then you remove them and churn everything. It was delicious.
- Kati's visit was on the 7th and 8th nights of Hanukkah, so I tried out the Big Breakfast Latkes from Smitten Kitchen. The recipe on her website is more or less the one in the first Smitten Kitchen cookbook - I used the potato starch per her 2017 update - and it came out fine. Squeezing the shredded potatoes in cheesecloth definitely is more effective than squeezing it in a clean dishtowel when it comes to removing excess liquid. I've never been a huge latke fan, but I'm starting to think that was a hangover from being a member of the latke brigade in the poorly ventilated synagogue kitchen all those times as a kid.
- I had made a challah for Kati's visit with the intent of making french toast on Sunday morning. At the last possible second I realized that Smitten Kitchen had a recipe for Cinnamon Toast French Toast (again from the first cookbook) which was also a lot less work, so I made that. It was delicious, especially with some extra mint ice cream on top.
- Going back to Eating Well, I made two recipes each from both the October and December 2021 issues. The Horseradish-Crusted Salmon with Crispy Leeks was probably the simplest of them. Basically, you smear a horseradish sauce on the salmon then roast it, and fry up some leeks that have been tossed in corn starch to serve with it. The salmon was good, the leeks less interesting.
- The same issue also gave us the Pork Schnitzel with Creamy Dill Sauce, which I made with turkey loin that had been bettered to the appropriate thinness. M likes to joke about both her proud Germanic heritage and her love of sauces, and this meal hit both on both areas. In addition to the creamy dill sauce, we used up assorted other sauces that we'd made for the latkes. M liked it a lot, so we'll probably make it again.
- Dropping back to the October 2021 Eating Well, there we found the Chicken Riggies, which basically a fast tomato sauce with cream poured over chicken and pasta. It was fine.
- The last of our Eating Well recipes, also from October 2021, was the Roasted Grape & Radicchio Salad. Smitten Kitchen introduced me to the wonders of oven roasted grapes some years ago, and this salad did not disappoint. It's quick and easy to make (Step 1: Roast grapes. Step 2: toss all ingredients in dressing.) and has a enjoyable flavor. We also learned that you can buy frozen Pomegranate arils, which is useful information. We even survived being given quite possibly the smallest radicchio I've ever seen, which turned out to be the perfect amount when mixed with the arugula.
- My friends Dan and Leigh have continued their international foot tour meals and made it Guatemala, where they made this version of Pepian de Pollo. M lived in Guatemala for a few years, and when I mentioned this recipe she said I had to make it for her. I did so, although I didn't add the chayote that Dan and Leigh used. The end result had a thick delicious sauce that tasted great with the chicken and rice. M didn't opine on whether it was "authentic," as they apparently didn't make pepian much in the mountains of Guatemala where she was stationed, but she really liked it, and it was easy enough that I'm sure we'll make it again.
- When I waxed eloquent about my mother's chocolate chip cookies, I mentioned that my sister had fond memories of her brownies. My mother says she made them quite a bit, but I have no recollection of them nor did I have a recipe. When we visited my parents last weekend, I asked my mother what she wanted to do that night, and she countered with an offer for us to make brownies. Accepted! It turns out my mother uses the Hershey's Chocolate Chip Brownies recipe right off the package - she long ago tapped the recipe to one of her recipe cards. It appears to be very similar to this one, and it tasted great. We didn't melt Andes Mints on top as my sister remembers it, but you can't have everything.
New Recipes for the Year: 156 (+11)
The last fifteen days featured 11 new recipes, including one I made with my mother when we visited them last weekend and three that I broke out for Kati's visit. They collectively came from three different issues of Eating Well, the back of a box, a website, one of my old cookbooks, and a new cookbook that I received for my birthday. Let's break it down.
- I had a piece of puff pastry left after our Thanksgiving Baked Brie, so I made the Potato-Leek Tart with Gochujang & Honey from the November 2021 Eating Well. In the interest of full disclosure, I substituted some other spicy things for the gochujang. I don't know that I'd buy more puff pastry just to make it again, but it was a nice flat-bread style hand held meal, with enough potatoes layered on it to make it more hefty than just a snack.
- The same issue of Eating Well gave us the Beet, Mandarin & Farro Salad. This salad was basically four steps: roast beets, cook faro, mix dressing, toss. M loves roasted beets, and I really enjoy farro. I think we'll make this again. On a side note, big shout out to Bob's Red Mill for putting the InstantPot instructions for farro right on the side of the package, which is the first time I've seen that.
- Kati's visit tapped our cookbook collection. My newest cookbook is Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, which I received as a birthday gift from my mother-in-law. It's the predecessor to the Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream Desserts that I'd been given a few years ago. We broke out the Backyard Mint Ice Cream as the first test subject from the cookbook. By a truly fortuitous and I swear completely unplanned coincidence, Backyard Mint Ice Cream is apparently Kati's favorite Jeni's flavor, so that worked really well. The mint leaves "steep" in the milk mix like tea, then you remove them and churn everything. It was delicious.
- Kati's visit was on the 7th and 8th nights of Hanukkah, so I tried out the Big Breakfast Latkes from Smitten Kitchen. The recipe on her website is more or less the one in the first Smitten Kitchen cookbook - I used the potato starch per her 2017 update - and it came out fine. Squeezing the shredded potatoes in cheesecloth definitely is more effective than squeezing it in a clean dishtowel when it comes to removing excess liquid. I've never been a huge latke fan, but I'm starting to think that was a hangover from being a member of the latke brigade in the poorly ventilated synagogue kitchen all those times as a kid.
- I had made a challah for Kati's visit with the intent of making french toast on Sunday morning. At the last possible second I realized that Smitten Kitchen had a recipe for Cinnamon Toast French Toast (again from the first cookbook) which was also a lot less work, so I made that. It was delicious, especially with some extra mint ice cream on top.
- Going back to Eating Well, I made two recipes each from both the October and December 2021 issues. The Horseradish-Crusted Salmon with Crispy Leeks was probably the simplest of them. Basically, you smear a horseradish sauce on the salmon then roast it, and fry up some leeks that have been tossed in corn starch to serve with it. The salmon was good, the leeks less interesting.
- The same issue also gave us the Pork Schnitzel with Creamy Dill Sauce, which I made with turkey loin that had been bettered to the appropriate thinness. M likes to joke about both her proud Germanic heritage and her love of sauces, and this meal hit both on both areas. In addition to the creamy dill sauce, we used up assorted other sauces that we'd made for the latkes. M liked it a lot, so we'll probably make it again.
- Dropping back to the October 2021 Eating Well, there we found the Chicken Riggies, which basically a fast tomato sauce with cream poured over chicken and pasta. It was fine.
- The last of our Eating Well recipes, also from October 2021, was the Roasted Grape & Radicchio Salad. Smitten Kitchen introduced me to the wonders of oven roasted grapes some years ago, and this salad did not disappoint. It's quick and easy to make (Step 1: Roast grapes. Step 2: toss all ingredients in dressing.) and has a enjoyable flavor. We also learned that you can buy frozen Pomegranate arils, which is useful information. We even survived being given quite possibly the smallest radicchio I've ever seen, which turned out to be the perfect amount when mixed with the arugula.
- My friends Dan and Leigh have continued their international foot tour meals and made it Guatemala, where they made this version of Pepian de Pollo. M lived in Guatemala for a few years, and when I mentioned this recipe she said I had to make it for her. I did so, although I didn't add the chayote that Dan and Leigh used. The end result had a thick delicious sauce that tasted great with the chicken and rice. M didn't opine on whether it was "authentic," as they apparently didn't make pepian much in the mountains of Guatemala where she was stationed, but she really liked it, and it was easy enough that I'm sure we'll make it again.
- When I waxed eloquent about my mother's chocolate chip cookies, I mentioned that my sister had fond memories of her brownies. My mother says she made them quite a bit, but I have no recollection of them nor did I have a recipe. When we visited my parents last weekend, I asked my mother what she wanted to do that night, and she countered with an offer for us to make brownies. Accepted! It turns out my mother uses the Hershey's Chocolate Chip Brownies recipe right off the package - she long ago tapped the recipe to one of her recipe cards. It appears to be very similar to this one, and it tasted great. We didn't melt Andes Mints on top as my sister remembers it, but you can't have everything.